


Arizona

by HostisHumaniGeneris



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Government Conspiracy, Other, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-04 07:19:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16342286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HostisHumaniGeneris/pseuds/HostisHumaniGeneris
Summary: "Sir... is it true he caught the last Runner on his own?" "Not caught.  Killed."





	Arizona

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/gifts).



The fire was at his back as he marched down the highway.  He wasn’t sure _how_ that explosion would be explained away, but it wasn’t his department.  Gas leak, domestic terrorist stockpiling, meth lab, coming up with a suitable line of bullshit was the easy part of the job.

His was the hard part. 

They’d been after her for twenty days, since it just materialized out of thin air--any further explanation for her emergence was need-to-know, and they apparently didn't need to know that.  Following her across the southwest, and dealing with the problems she caused was tricky to do clandestinely.  They had been lucky to be hot on her heels, catching the people she was in direct contact with fast and dealing with them before it could branch out too much.  Arizona’s state troopers or highway patrol or  whatever would be wracking their brains over the rash of carjackings and arsons along the highway.  When they found out she had been riding the rails… well, the train was already carrying hazardous materials; a tragic accident was arranged easily enough.

Yeah, there’d definitely be a lot of _coincidences_ to be tied to the destruction of Two Bluff, Arizona.  A town that had less than half the number of people his graduating high school class had.  Once the fires died down, there’s be nothing left.

Domestic terrorism was the likeliest angle.  Something like a militia stockpiling guns, that would justify a federal investigation.  Lieutenant Cross figured he’d probably end up back in Two Bluff sooner or later, plainclothes, rather than in body armor.

He was getting sidetracked.  He was fatigued, and before he called in the strike on the town, the action was messy; if following her had been simple, they’d been lulled into a false sense of security when they finally got her.  The truckers and motorists who she hitchhiked with weren’t symptomatic; and he’d done this long enough—not long, just long enough—that killing a pleading man was simple as a little flex of the index finger.

The denizens of Two Bluff _were_ symptomatic.  His platoon hadn’t expected that and was unprepared.  They were divided; Cross and a few men managed to break from the engagement when they noticed he was fleeing down the highway.  By the time they reached the town limits, as they were, he was the only one alive.  The rest of the platoon had holed up, dug in.

They didn’t have time to waste and Cross made the tough call.

He’d waited until he was no longer danger close before requesting the strike.  Not out of fear.  He wasn’t afraid to burn himself along with the infection, but he had a job to get done first; he was the last asset on the ground.  He picked off a few walkers who had been straggling after him since he left the town; black blobs silhouetted against the burning homes and church.

Then he got back on her trail. 

He hoped she wasn’t making good time.  He was pretty sure the dark spot in the midsection was from blood soaking through her sundress—one of the team had gotten her.  He was moving at an even pace, following the black splotches against the road, dusted tan with dirt.  A few places the splotches were bigger, or a series of palm prints against the asphalt.  She was wounded.

Human beings were actually among the best persistence hunters on the planet, he remembered one a Colonel from the Unit telling him a long time ago.  How did their ancestors catch four-legged things that moved so much faster then them?  Just follow it, and follow it, and follow it until it tired—he was currently running high on a devil’s brew of adrenaline, instant coffee, and go pills.  And he had her trail.

He just had to follow.

The evidence of her stumbling was going more frequent—Runners were tough but if she was wounded, she was putting constant wear and tear on her body.  Was just hurting herself more, rather than healing.  His head was throbbing and his feet aching as the chase ran on.  It felt like he’d been walking forever when he finally sighted her.

She was definitely limping.  He raised his rifle, lowered it and continued to close in on her—his hands were shaking.  Could’ve been the pills.  Or maybe, just maybe it was the reality of the situation sinking in.  She was a Runner.  Procedure for them usually involved air support.  Not tailing them through a desert highway with an assault rifle.  Alone.

He radioed in, had eyes on target, when could air support be there?  The Spirit that had just cratered Two Bluff was en route back to base for rearming, so that’d be a while.  Two Blackhawks were en route, packed with more troops.  They rattled off the estimated time of arrival, and he picked up the pace. 

The headlights in the distance were an unwelcome sight. A truck was driving, inbound. It stopped. She walked over.

Lieutenant Cross raised the rifle, took a deep breath, and the shots rang out. Short bursts through the driver and passenger side of the windscreen, half a magazine's worth; then he fired at the shape next to the driver's side. She had turned and presented her back as she tried to flee again. The first burst caught her in the shoulder blades. She stumbled but kept walking.  He fired again.  And again.  He kept walking and firing.   Eventually, stumbling, she rounded on him, bloody froth dripping from her mouth as she limped at him, then crawled, then twitched by the time he gotten within ten meters and his rifle clicked empty.  He swapped magazines, flipped the selector switch to full auto, and stepped in closer.  The thing had grown still, but a minute tensing of it's extremities was all the warning he got. 

He dove off the road just as it launched a wild leap at him.  It hit the pavement wetly, bleeding from the multitude of holes perforating it's abdomen and chest.  Center mass shots weren't doing enough, so as she struggled to lift herself with ruined musculature, he took aim and she looked at him with a set of cloudy blue eyes that reminded him briefly of marbles before shot her in the head in a staccato burst.  The runner seized, and another longer burst made her drop like a marionette with its strings cut.  He emptied the remaining two dozen or so bullets in under three seconds, and the Runner jerked and danced on the ground as hot brass fell across the dirt.  He repeated it with his last mag, too.

The runner didn't move anymore.

Command was politely requesting clarification over what had happened over the radio—they’d heard the gunfire and wanted to know just what had happened.  When he reported that he had engaged the target, Command asked what its condition was. 

He looked over the meat with splintered bone and so much blood, wrapped in a torn-up skin.  He repeated that he had engaged the target.  “It’s down.  ETA on reinforcements?”

It was better safe than sorry; there wasn’t a lot recognizable between the infection and the work his rifle had done on her.  But he’d seen plenty of unrecognizable things since he was inducted into Blackwatch.  That she was still and mangled was not proof enough.  He stood vigil over the Runner until the thrum of rotors filled his ears and they kicked up a duststorm as more troops disembarked.

They confirmed the kill for him.  He heard the ranking officer among them, a Lieutenant, rant that he had just made Captain with that.  Someone else asked if the Old Man would let them mount the thing’s head—if Cross had killed the runner solo, he _deserved_ it decorating his wall.  When a pickup blundered down the two-lane road the newcomers lit it up, the think drifting off road with way too many holes in it. 

Someone else asked what the cover story was.  As he looked over the corpse on the ground, the thing that once looked like a girl that had popped into Arizona, that he had hunted for three miserable weeks and killed plenty of people to clean up after, who he lost an entire platoon chasing, he couldn’t bother to care about the cleanup.  How they’d explain away what they did to the press, how they’d get rid of the corpse, _who_ would be studying it.  None of those questions were particularly important to Robert Cross.

Where she had come from… that was the interesting question. 

**Author's Note:**

> Cross isn't a character I've written much for, and it's something I'm kind of hoping fix going forward. He's interesting in that his priorities clearly don't align with Randall's, but he's still essentially the best Blackwatch has. The web of intrigue provided a nice place to explore his early career; that hunt for the runner in Arizona.


End file.
